lundi 30 avril 2012

Yaina is a Latin classic. In fact, it's Harold Jazzbo Alexander flute trickeries that largely steal the show and make the real worth of this instrumental album and make it fall into the " classics" category. It starts with an excellent jazz funk Rolling Stones cover, You Can't get Always What You Want, that was not on the first original release of album but is on this 1996 Ubiquity reedition. Then you can find the eerie anti war Cease The Bombing and burn up the dance floor with Chitterlings Con Carne, its cries at the beginning and the flute that answers to the guitar. Those are the three stronger cuts of the album but the rest of it stays very solid.

dimanche 29 avril 2012

Among all the compilation made about Blaxploitation movie, Can You Dig It? is probably the most complete and ambitious. Complete because among the 34 titles of this double CD you will be able to find the main and most interesting titles of the era (nothing important has been forgotten). Ambitious beacuse it is sold with a 96 pages real book with a rich iconography that make it by itself a necessary purchase even if you probably already possess under one form or another the majority of the titles. Coffy, Shaft In Africa, Trouble Man, Willie Dynamite, Across 110th Street, The Mack, Black Caesar, Superfly, Foxy Brown, Three Tough Guys, Shaft, Truck Turner, Hell Up In Harlem, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, They Call Me Mister Tibbs are soundtracks mandatory in any record collection and you will find their most emblematic songs in here. I personnaly anyways dicover less known titles like Gene Page's Blacula, Dennis Coffey's Theme From Black Belt Jones, Joe Simon's Theme From Cleopatra Jones and one of my favorite song of that era, Gordon Staples' Strung Out from the Mean Johnny Barrows soundtrack. I won't post any YouTube video with this short text as you probably already know what it's all about.

samedi 28 avril 2012

Vadim Music is a nice label located in the French Alps, near Grenoble, and specialized in the reedition of French pop, pysche, library, soundtracks or jazzy nuggets. Dou Da Dou is an excellent compilation of rare singles by the likes of France Gall, Jack Ary, François de Roubaix or Demis Roussos. Some of those names might afraid people familiar with French music, because they quickly fell into mainstream mediocrity but Vadim guys exhumed pretty intersting sides of their work. France Gall song, Zoïzoï, stays her most sought-after recording while Demis Roussos' A Travers Montmartre, penned with Stelios Valvianos, could be featured on any blaxploitation soundtrack. Very catchy, sexy and amazing. One of my favorite compilation.

dimanche 22 avril 2012

I bought the VP 2004 CD reedition of this record and I don't really know if Warning was effectively released on Wild Flower in 1980. Its original release date is subject to debate among reggae heads (i.e. the Roots Archives Forums if you are interested http://www.roots-archives.com/forum/). The Black Eagles were a band created by Denroy Morgan in 1970. They relased a handful of 7" and the Warning LP. Warning was recorded in Harry Jay studio en Jamaica porbably in 1978 then overdubbed in New-York. It's a record that is not that common, that has not been that much posted and pretty good to have if you are into reggae roots. Denroy Morgan then went for a solo career but still used The Black Eagles as backing band. I let reggae connoisseurs make comments if they think more need to be written about this one.

samedi 14 avril 2012

Earthquake Dub was the first dub album produced by Ossie Hibbert and was released on his own label, Earthquake. The album was released as well on Joe Gibbs Record Globe imprint and on Count Shelley's label, Live & Love in the UK with all the tracks retitled. The Hot Pot Records reedition I post today follows the titles as used by Ossie Hibbert on the original release. As often with dub albums, Ossie used versions and recut of songs and riddims made for other artists. That's how he used the bassline to Keith & Tex's Stop That Train but with new horns arrangement. You can find pieces of classics sang by Dennis Brown, The Abbyssinians or Phyllis Dillon updated in rockers style by Ossie and The Revolutionaries. If you read the credits, you discover that The Revolutionaries were no half-weights but a who's who of Jamaican music: Sly Dunbar on drums, Bertram 'Ranchie' McClean on bass, Radford 'Duggie' Bryan and Earl 'Chinna' Smith on guitars, Ossie Hibbert himself and Ansel Collins on keyboards, Headley Bennett, Dean Fraser and Herman Marquis on alto sax, Tommy McCook on tenor sax and flute, Vin Gordon on trombone, Bobby Ellis on trumpet, Uziah 'Stick' Thompson and Noel 'Scully' Simms on percussion. The reissue of this masterpiece comes with eight bonus cuts.

lundi 9 avril 2012

If I consider that already ten people have downloaded yesterday's post (Bollywood Funk Experience), Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! should interest at least the same people. Behind World Psychedelic Funk Classics you can find Egon and the Nown Again crew. So this time, expect an Indian psyche funk music compilation that lives up to its name, with effectively a lot of funk, hard breakbeats and psyche in it. But don't expect it to be the kind of underground compilation that digged ultimate Bollywood nuggets. As you can read in the nicely illustrated booklet, this compilation serves as an introduction to the genre and in fact plenty of titles have already been compilated elsewhere, especially if you possess already the two volumes of the Sitar Beat serie (I posted them both a while ago at the beginning of this blog thing) or the excellent mixes called Shitala. For those in the shadows of ignorance, Psych Funk Sa-Re-Ga! is the best way to grab a handful of Kalyanji Anandji or R.D. Burman titles. You can even find a title from Atomic Forest's Obsession '77, Mary Long, recently reedited by Now Again, and Kalus Doldinger's Sitar Beat. This last title has nothing Indian except its influences but is German.

dimanche 8 avril 2012

You've got two parts in this compilation. The first part is a bit disapointing: the tracks selected are undoubtely Bollywood but there is not much funk in it. It's not that it is bad, it's just that I don't know much about this musical form and it sounds more like Indian restaurant muzak to my profane ears. Things start to get serious with the 9th track, a surf/funk piece fused by a wah-wah guitar called Pyar Chahiye Keh Paisa and due to Charanjit Singh. Then comes 4 tracks by Indian funk master RD Burman, an artist often compiled in the Western World: the instrumental Unknown Incidental Music, the minimalit Dance Music, all tablas and saxophone, another track called Dance Music as well, clearly influenced by Italian soundtracks of the time, and Music, a song that cannot hide its psyche rock influences. Laxmikant Pyarelal spent some time listening Morricone sountracks as well before composing his own Theme Music. Anuradha Paudwal is the more original, mixing Bollywood voices with a dub rythm and electronica for Mainne Kaun Koi Kya Jane. If you must possess this compilation for only one reason, then it will be for Salma Agha minimalist space disco, Come Closer, a song that is so good and so catchy with its killing bassline and its psyche sitar licks that you listen to it again and again. If only all Bollywood were that good...

samedi 7 avril 2012

If you are fed up with my previous Mods posts, you'll find today rarest and more unusual sounds. Egon's one and onely Now Again Records label, explores this time the Indonesian psyche scene of the 70's. American, West European and African scenes have been largely explored, compiled and reedited but the Asian artists stay relatively ignored. Egon associated his digging forces with Jason "Moss" Connoy and Benny Soebardja to release this 20 titles anthology. Those Shocking Shaking Days is your only chance to ear Rollies funkd Bad News, Shark Move's Evil War, already sampled by Madlib, Super Kid slow psyche funk People, a mix between The Temptations produced by Norman Whitfield and Roy Ayers, or The Gang Of Harry Roesli fabulous break at the beginning of Don't Talk About Freedom. All this makes me think to the Tropicalia movement that was happening in Brazil at the same time. In both countries you find artists that were trying to break traditional musical molds and using Western music forms like a breath of fresh air in a harsch political context charaterized by a dictatorship. Like always with Now Again, the reedition work is splendid. You can find a nicely illustrated book accompanying CD with pictures of all the records covers and complete notes on each songs.

dimanche 1 avril 2012

If you like my Decca post a couple of weeks ago, then you'll appreciate this german pressing compilation of the sides recorded by The Mark Four/The Creation between 1964 and 1967. The Mark Four switched their name for The Creation in 1966 and had already changed two of their original line-up members (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_%28band%29). When Alan McGee decided to create his label in 1983, Creation records, he borrowed the name of his favorite band, The Creation. This is probably one of the biggest legacy of The Creation, a band that is still vowed by garage aficionados. When you here the raw energy of the tracks of this nice little compilation, you easily understand why.

This Blog 10 Commandements

1) You will only find here music released between 1950 and 1989.

2) You will find here an eclectic selection of records I possess personally.

3) You will only find here records I digged with love during long hours spent in records shops (yes, there are still some existing and pretty good ones) or in any other place where you can find records.

4) You will only find here records I like and that I think deserve a better recognition. If you like them too, don't forget you can buy them. There's certainly a way to find them somewhere for a cheap price.

5) If you own the rights on some of the music featured here and think that my posts decrease dramatically your sales, just send me a mail or leave me a comment. I will withdraw the downloading link immediately.

6) I spend a lot of time on each post, riping, scanning, uploading, writing a little and all that with a lot of pleasure.

7) Re-uping records pisses me off. If a link is dead, just subscribe to this blog or become a member and you won't miss anything in the future.